Scars
by wolfpawn
Summary: Derek Morgan is always seen as strong and able to withstand everything, but he didn't always feel like that, and when he reveals his dark secret to Spencer Reid, he realises he is not alone. One-shot M/R SLASH. WARNING TRIGGERS, SELF HARM, SUBSTANCE ABUSE, ATTEMPTED SUICIDE, REFERENCES TO SEXUAL ABUSE


Derek watched Spencer's face as he tried to control the fear in his own. He knew that eventually this was going to happen, after all, it was all part of the natural progression of a healthy relationship. Nevertheless, he still couldn't take his mind off it. Showing his legs to Spencer shouldn't fill him with the terror he was feeling at that moment. He had fobbed off his scars to sexual partners before as "part of the job" or "a bad tackle through a widow/on glass with an Unsub" but Spencer wasn't other people, and this was no passing fling. He would know immediately, he was trained to look for the likes of this, trained to know the signs. He sighed and prepared himself, taking a deep breath; he pulled down his jeans and stood in front of his lover, shaking slightly as he watched the other man. Spencer seemed to squint his eyes for a moment before his all too able mind realised what exactly he was seeing on the other man's legs.

"Derek?" there was no judgement, no disappointment in his voice, or indeed his face.

"I was young, I didn't know how to cope" Derek began to explain. Spencer sat at the side of the bed, and pulled Derek towards him, inspecting the long healed, but still obvious lines of raised lighter skin.

"Some of these were really quite deep, what on earth did you use?"

"A scalpel I stole from the biology dissection room at school."

"Some of them suffered infection too didn't they?" Derek nodded slightly startled by his lovers ability to read the scars and their healing patterns as he gently rubbed a long slender finger over the old wounds. He then looked up at Derek's disheartened face. "The Buford situation?"

Derek nodded shamefully. Spencer said no more as he gently began to kiss each and every scar, one by one, first the left thigh, and then the right.

"I thought if I was ugly, tainted he wouldn't want me, that he'd stop. But he didn't seem to care and after a while, I couldn't stop. It made me feel like I had some control, that I could make myself feel, because with him all I ever felt was numb with fear and anger, but this was pain and blood, it reminded me I was actually alive." Tears came to his eyes, but he refused to let them fall. "Looking at them makes me feel so weak. Like I couldn't just deal with it, so many people just put those sort of experiences behind them and never think about them again, they do it every single day, but I couldn't. I wasn't strong like them."

Spencer stopped what he was doing and pulled Derek onto the bed next to him. "No one joins the BAU having had the perfect life." He took a deep breath. "When I was fifteen, I had just finished my doctorate in Mathematics and was about to start my one in Chemistry. But I was under a lot of stress, trying not to let people find out just how bad my mother was, because then Child Protective Services would have gotten involved then, the whole thing about my dad abandoning us, the torture I had suffered for years at the hands of my peers, trying to get by on little to no money, and the pressure I felt to be as brilliant as I was expected to be, it became too much." Derek's eyes went wide. "I went to three different pharmacies on campus and I bought different pain medications in each of them as to not rise suspicion. Then there was a large party in one of the dorm down from mine so I snuck in and robbed a half bottle of bourbon." Derek gulped audibly, there was only one direction this story was going to go in. "I waited until the weekend so my roommate wouldn't be the one to find me, and I left the room door slightly ajar so someone would peak in swiftly enough. I put the shower on as hot as it would go and I went into it and took all the pills at once, washing them down with the bourbon."

"What happened? How are you still here?"

Spencer shook his head, smiling slightly as he thought back to his young stupidity. "A fifteen year old with no previous drinking experience downing nearly half a litre of hard liquor, what do you think happened? I puked my guts up, well not literally, after all that would actually be impossible, but you get the idea. I was seriously ill for a few days after, my sight and hearing went fuzzy because I was so lightheaded, I could barely eat or drink, I just lay in bed, in a weird half conscious state. It was one hell of a wake up call though. Then I had my problem with dilaudid, so no Derek, you weren't weak, and neither was I, though we felt it at the time. We survived things that were horrific, that shows us just how strong we actually are." The younger smiled.

Derek pulled Spencer closer to him. "We're both imperfect so?"

"Name a person who isn't."

"You're too wise for your age Spencer Reid, do you know that?" he said placing a lingering kiss to his lover's temple.

"Apparently so." Spencer pulled the strong hand that was resting on his shoulder to his face and kissed it.

For the remainder of the evening, they lay on the bed, talking about the horrific occurances of their childhoods, until Derek insisted that they talk about the more pleasant parts, refusing to wallow in what had been the darker events for too long, before falling asleep in each others arms.


End file.
